First lady Michelle Obama meets students at Harper High School in Chicago. / Nancy Stone AP

by Maria Puente, USA TODAY

by Maria Puente, USA TODAY

Like most of her predecessors, first lady Michelle Obama has been careful not to get tangled up in contentious political issues. Until today.

But even as she traveled to Chicago to take a stand against gun violence, she did it in a personal - and emotional - way, nearly coming to tears as she lamented the scores of youths gunned down in the streets of her hometown in recent months.

In particular, she compared herself and her upbringing on Chicago's South Side to that of teenage honor student, Hadiya Pendleton, 15, who was shot to death in a city park just a week after performing as a majorette in President Obama's Inaugural Parade. Mrs. Obama attended her funeral, and noted how familiar Hadiya's family seemed.

"Hadiya Pendleton was me and I was her," Obama said, her voice shaking and breaking. "But I got to grow up and go to Princeton and Harvard Law School and have a career and a family and the most blessed life I could ever imagine."

According to the White House transcript of her speech, the first lady said her parents, schools and safe community were advantages for her. "That was the difference between growing up and becoming a lawyer, a mother and first lady of the United States, and being shot dead at the age of 15," she said.

In Chicago to attend a conference on youth violence, Obama said that city leaders have a "moral obligation" to protect youths from gun violence. She also declared a stand on a political issue before Congress - new gun controls her husband has proposed in response to the Newtown, Conn., school massacre in December. "These reforms deserve a vote," she said.

This was new for Obama, who in four years as FLOTUS has largely confined her public activities to fighting childhood obesity and supporting military families, becoming a pop-culture and fashion-friendly figure in the process. (In Chicago, she was dressed in a collarless gray pantsuit with a metal belt.)

Before her speech today, pundits speculated that it would mark a shift in her approach to her job, that she would take more hard-edged stands on political controversies in the future. But her appearances in Chicago suggested more poignancy than politics.

"Let me tell you, it is hard to know what to say to a room full of teenagers who are about to bury their best friend," said Obama, whose older daughter, Malia, will turn 15 this summer.

So far, the White House (both wings) is not talking about what all this might mean for the first lady's agenda over the next four years. But after the conference speech, she went to a high school in a gang-plagued community where two dozen youths have been shot in the last year.

She met with a dozen students and staff in the library, telling them she was there to listen and to encourage, which is what Obama says all the time to young people she encounters at the White House or on the road.

"I want to do a lot of listening. I want to learn what's going on in your school, your communities," she told the students. "There isn't much distance between me and you."